Grossman


Jeffrey Grossman

Associate Professor

Degrees

Ph.D. University of Texas at Austin 1992

M.A. Tufts University 1986

B.A.  Tufts University 1982

Interests

Jeffrey Grossman’s research interests address questions of literary translation and cultural transformation (in Yiddish, German and English), while relating those questions to that of memory and the controversial German (Jewish) writer Heinrich Heine.  His work focuses on Heine since Heine condenses within both his writing and his person a series of conflicts and interventions about poetry and the public role of intellectuals, on the one hand, and about modern Jewish and German identities, on the other.  One recent paper presented at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York (part of the Center for Jewish History),  “The Invention of Love? Or, How Moyshe Leyb Halpern Read Heinrich Heine,” explores how a major avant-garde Yiddish poet responded to Heine in the effort to transform his own writing and Yiddish poetry, in general.  A forthcoming article, “Fractured Histories: Heine's Responses to Violence and Revolution” draws on the work of Pierre Bourdieu to explore the role of violence, memory and love in Heine’s work.  This material is part of a larger book project on Heine, memory and transmission of texts across different linguistic cultures (German, Yiddish, English) in key historical moments – as, for instance, in American Jewish immigrant culture, in the Nazi period in Germany, and immediate aftermath of WWII (in German and English), as well as in the period of the 68ers in Germany.

Books

The Discourse on Yiddish in German Literature from the Enlightenment to the Second

Empire (Camden House, 2000)

 
Translation of: Christian Wiese. The Life and Thought of Hans Jonas. Brandeis UP 2007.

Articles

“Faust, Frankenstein, the Golem and the Castle,” in Thinking of Reading, ed. Jessica
 Feldman and Robert Stilling, Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia (forthcoming)

 “Das Fortleben des Jiddischen vor und nach 1945: Übersetzungen und

 Transformationen,“ in Dialog der Disziplinen: Jüdische Studien und

 Literaturwissenschaft, ed. Eva Lezzi and Dorothea Seltzer. Berlin: Metropol-
Verlag. forthcoming

“Fractured Histories: Heinrich Heine’s Responses to Violence and Revolution,” in Violence in German Literature, Culture, and Intellectual History, 1789-1938, ed. Carl Niekerk and Stefani Engelstein. Amsterdam: Rodopi.  forthcoming

 “Sholem Aleichem and the Politics of German Jewish Identity: Translations and Transformations,” in Between Two Worlds: The German--Yiddish Encounter, ed. by Jeremy Dauber and Jerold C. Frakes. Leuven: Peeters Publ., Studia Rosenthalianer Series. forthcoming

“Pictures of Travel: Heine in America,” revised and expanded version of paper presented at The  Seventeenth 
St. Louis Symposium on German Literature and Culture, entitled  Transfer Effects: Appropriations of German 
Culture in Nineteenth-Century America.

Washington University, 3 April 2004. German Culture in Nineteenth-Century America: Reception, 
Adaptation, Transformation, ed. Lynne Tatlock and Matthew Erlin. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2005

 “’Als . . . Israel sich oft erlustigt’: Sehnsüchte und kulturelle Aneignung in Heines Lyrik.” 
In: Fremdes Begehren: Transkulturelle Beziehungen in Literatur, Kunst und Medien, ed. 
Eva Lezzi and Monika Ehlters. Cologne: Böhlau, 2003. 45-55.

 "`Die Beherrschung der Sprache’: Funktionen des Jiddischen in der deutschen Kultur von Heine 
bis Frenzel.” In: 1848 und das Versprechen der Moderne. Ed. Jürgen Fohrmann and Helmut 
Schneider. Königshausen und Neumann, 2003. 165-178.

 “Heine and Jewish Culture: The Poetics of Appropriation.” In: A Companion to Heinrich Heine,

  ed. Roger Cook. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2002. 251-282.

 

 “From East to West: Translating Y. L. Peretz in Early 20th-Century Germany.” In Orality,  Textuality, 

and the Materiality of Jewish Tradition: Representations and Transformations,  ed. Israel Gershoni 

and Yaakov Elman. New Haven: Yale UP. 2000. 278-309.

“Heinrich Heine,” entry in Oxford Book of Literature in English Translation. Ed. Peter France.
 Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000.

“Wilhelm von Humboldt's Linguistic Ideology: The Problem of Pluralism and the Absolute Difference 
of National Character - Or, where do the Jews fit in?”  German Studies Review 20.1 (1997): 23-47.

“Herder and the Language of Diaspora Jewry.” Monatshefte 86.1 (1994): 59-79.

“The Reception of Walter Benjamin in the Anglo-American Literary Institution.”                  

The German Quarterly 65.3-4 (1992): 414-428.

 “Far vos ignorirn di literatur-kritiker A.N. Shtentslen?” (“Why do Literary Historians Ignore A.N. 
Stencl?”) (in Yiddish) Oksforder Yidish: A Yearbook of Yiddish Studies 1 (1990): 91-105.

Awards and Fellowships

Professor Bernard Choseed Memorial Fellow, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 2006-2007                

NEH Fellow, Summer Institute, “German & European Studies in the U.S.: Changing World, Shifting

        Narratives,” organized by U of Massachusetts Amherst, 2005             

Mead Endowment Teaching Award, 2003                                       

Fulbright Fellow, German Studies Seminar: “History and Memory: Jewish

        Present and Past in Germany”, 2000                                          

Faculty Research Grant, U of  Virginia, 1997, 2000, 2003                           

University Teaching Fellowship (formerly the Lilly Teaching Fellowship), U of Virginia, 1999-2000

Fellow, Center for Judaic Studies, U of Pennsylvania, 1995-1996               

Fulbright, Israel Junior Researcher Award (Hebrew U, Jerusalem) 1992-1994                    

University of Texas Continuing Graduate Fellowship, 1988-1989, 1991-1992                    

DAAD - Dissertation Research Fellowship in Federal Republic of Germany, 1989-1990                           

Best Essay - Oxford Summer Programme in Yiddish, 1988